The slim and compact 16-megapixel Canon PowerShot Elph 110 HS boasts a very sharp, wide lens, but is hampered by noise at higher ISO settings and a limited zoom range.

The Canon PowerShot Elph 110 HS ($249.99 direct) is another example of a high-resolution compact camera that provides excellent sharpness, but falls a bit short in terms of high ISO performance. The compact camera packs a modest 5x zoom lens and offers 1080p24 video recording. The 16-megapixel shooter is also in an awkward place in Canon's Elph lineup—the price difference between it and our Editors' Choice PowerShot Elph 310 HS ($259.99, 4 stars) is only $10—that camera doesn't offer as many megapixels, but does serve up a more impressive 8x zoom range.

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Design and Features Taking its design cues from many other members of the current Elph family, the 110 HS features rounded edges and a metal exterior and is available in a variety of colors: black, blue, green, pink, red, or silver. It measures 2.2 by 3.7 by 0.8 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.8 ounces—making it only a tenth of an inch larger and a tenth of an ounce heavier than the Elph 310 HS . The camera's rear LCD is 3 inches in size and boasts a 461k-dot resolution, which is bright and sharp for a camera in this class—it's got twice the pixels as the 230k-dot screen found on the Samsung ST80 ($249.99, 3 stars).

You get a 5x (24-120mm equivalent) zoom lens, which delivers a wider field of view, but less telephoto reach than the 8x (28-224mm) lens that is packed into the 310 HS's equally compact body. The extra-wide field of view sets the 110 HS apart from the crowd—it can capture wide-angle scenes that a camera with a 28mm lens just isn't capable of. One issue with the lens is the amount of noise it makes when zooming in or out. The motor is much louder than that of other compact cameras, to the point where it could be distracting when used in a quieter social situation.

You'll find all of the standard controls on the camera—which is impressive when you consider its size. There are dedicated controls for Exposure Compensation, Macro mode, Flash control, and Movie recording. A top-mounted switch makes it easy to toggle between Auto and Program modes. The Elph's menu system will be a familiar site to Canon shooters—hitting the Function button brings up an overlay display that gives you quick access to shooting settings, including the ISO, Drive mode, and Metering mode.

Performance and Conclusions Like other Canon cameras that bear the HS moniker, the Elph 110 HS does a good job in terms of speed. It can start up and grab a shot in about 2.1 seconds, records a 0.2-second shutter lag, and can shoot continuously with 0.6 second between photos. This leaves the pokey Samsung SH100 ($199.99, 3 stars) in the dust—that camera requires 3.5 seconds to boot and shoot, records a half-second shutter lag, and makes you wait a full 2.7 seconds between shots.

I used Imatest to measure the sharpness of photos captured by the Elph 110 HS, and the results were actually quite good. We consider a sharp image to be one that contains a center-weighted average of 1,800 lines per picture height, and the 110 HS exceeded that—recording 2,189 lines. In this regard the camera ran circles around the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH27 ($229.95, 2.5 stars), a camera that only managed 1,548 lines.

High ISO performance was another matter entirely. We consider a clean image to be one that contains less than 1.5 percent noise. The Elph 110 HS was only able to keep noise under this threshold through ISO 200, a surprisingly low setting. That said, it only registered about 1.6 percent at ISO 400 and ISO 800, so it isn't going to produce terribly grainy photos at higher ISO settings. That's the good news. The bad news is that the camera applies some pretty aggressive noise reduction to hit even these just-ok numbers. Detail is slightly diminished at ISO 400, but you can still make out textures and fine lines in the image. At ISO 800 it's bad, and at ISO 1600 it's pretty terrible—any semblance of texture is gone from your photo by that point. The Canon PowerShot Elph 310 HS does a much better job both in terms of image noise and preservation of detail—it keeps noise under 1.5 percent through ISO 800, while managing to do a great job with image detail through ISO 400. At ISO 800 it's not that bad at all, although at ISO 1600 the 310 HS is also a victim of some heavy-handed noise reduction.

HD video comes in two flavors: 1080p24 or 720p30. Movie clips are saved in QuickTime format, with H.264 compression, and look very nice. Video is sharp and colors are crisp. The camera can zoom while recording, but the sound of the lens moving is quite audible on the soundtrack. The camera is compatible with standard SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards, and features mini USB and mini HDMI ports for computer and HDTV connectivity.

The PowerShot Elph 110 HS is a good compact camera, but not a great one. Its lens is sharp, but Canon's decision to cram 16 megapixels onto a tiny sensor results in noisy images at higher ISO settings. The camera attempts to counteract this with noise reduction, but only serves to kill detail in photos at higher ISOs. This won't be a problem on smaller-size screens, but if you want to share your photos on larger LCDs or prints, the lack of texture and detail at higher ISO settings will be noticeable.

Canon also turns out to be its own worst enemy here—if the PowerShot 310 HS wasn't available for a mere $10 more, the 110 HS would be easier to recommend. The 310 HS, which earned our Editors' Choice award for midrange compact cameras, features a nearly identical design and a more impressive 8x zoom lens. It does have fewer megapixels and its lens doesn't provide the extra-wide 24mm field of view of the 110 HS, but when you consider the noise reduction that the 110 HS requires to shoot images at ISO 800 and above, you really aren't losing much in terms of image quality when shooting in anything but bright light.

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About the Author

Senior digital camera analyst for the PCMag consumer electronics reviews team, Jim Fisher is a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he concentrated on documentary video production. Jim's interest in photography really took off when he borrowed his father's Hasselblad 500C and light meter in 2007. He honed his writing skills at re... See Full Bio

Canon PowerShot Elph 110 HS

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